MARIE OPATRNÁ
info@kaplanka.org
en

It wasn´t bullying, it was inexperience

02/01/2024

  • Last year, in the autumn of 2022, I met personally, at my request, with the then-new archbishop of Prague, Mons. Graubner. We had a nice chat, the archbishop promised to get to know the matter. And then came the letter dated October 21, 2022, from which I still haven't recovered: "I am going back to your visit when you informed me about your point of view and your demands for the settlement of the old dispute with the Archbishopric of Prague. I found out thatyou signed a mediation agreement on March 10, 2020. For me, the whole thing is closed, if the agreement will be fulfilled.''

I responded with a letter dated November 7, 2022, in which I clearly described the dispute's progress so far. I am only briefly quoting from my letter regarding the alleged mediation agreement: "... the document attached to your letter is not a mediation agreement, but a legally non-binding protocol of mediation."

The archbishop's reply is dated November 28, 2022: "...I offered to implement the agreement of March 10, 2020, signed by you. I was surprised by your reaction... you are returning to the beginning of negotiations and have unrealistic demands. Therefore, I postpone the matter and continue to rely on a court solution, although there is still a willingness on my part to settle out of court."

I replied by letter on December 1, 2022: "I am sorry that in your letter you again marked the document entitled Protocol on the Mediation of 10.3.2020 as an agreement, as in the letter of October 21, 2022. ... It is clear from its text that it is not an agreement, but a protocol in the text of which it is stated in bold: This protocol is not a mediation agreement and is not legally binding for the Parties in any way."

How is it possible that a protocol on mediation is passed off as a mediation agreement? By whom and how was the archbishop informed of the dispute? What documents were presented to the archbishop? Did he even see the minutes of the mediation? If an agreement had been signed in 2020, everything would have been resolved since then. Many questions are still emerging. For me, however, the most pressing question is the fundamental question from which the previous ones follow: Who was enormously interested in ensuring that there would be no progress, let alone reconciliation, when in the letters signed by the archbishop the legally non-binding protocol on mediation is presented as a mediation agreement signed by me? Or is everything different? And how? Time will tell...

The title of today's article is taken from the AP's statement of March 22, 2023: "Yes, there is the misfortune of many dismissals, but it was not about bullying, but about the defendant's 'inexperience' in how to construct the dismissal within the church, when the defendant was originally successful in the ordinary courts. It was only after the intervention of the Constitutional Court that it became uneconomical. That could not have been foreseen. Such a dispute has never been conducted within the Church, and it is, therefore, necessary to look at the dispute through the prism that the defendant did not want to be harsh or calculating from the beginning. Still, de facto believed in a settlement all along."

The passing off of the minutes as an agreement and the defendant's inexperience are two of the climactic moments of the whole tragicomedy I am experiencing.

  • Betting one dismissal after another in a total of 5 is not bullying, but inexperience.
  • Inexperience is probably also the fact that someone slips (if at all) a record of mediation to the archbishop and passes it off as a mediation agreement signed by me.
  • They could not have anticipated the Constitutional Court's ruling (30.8.2018), even though their actions violated my right of access to a court guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms.
  • They could not have anticipated the Constitutional Court's ruling (30.8.2018), even though their actions led to a violation of my freedom of religion, which is also guaranteed by the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms and the Convention for the Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.

In connection with the Constitutional Court's ruling, they dare to say that

  • they were successful in the courts – only after the intervention of the Constitutional Court were they uneconomical.
  • Yes, yes, in disputes over the invalidity of the third dismissal, the Constitutional Court thwarted their successes in some lower courts. These "successes" were based on false claims about my spiritual condition, which led to a violation of my right access to civil courts.
  • They didn't want to be harsh, calculating, or bullied.
  • After all, they are poor people who are inexperienced and have the "best of intentions" – they believed and still believe in a settlement.

The liquidation of a person at any cost, continuing even after the Constitutional Court's ruling, wrapped in the cloak of inexperience and permanent openness to conciliation, spiced up with a flagrant substitution of the record of mediation for a mediation agreement. Who else can act in a "truthful, sincere, helpful, kind, sensitive" way than the Archbishopric of Prague!